Assessing the predictability of fire occurrence and area burned across phytoclimatic regions in Spain

We address the predictability of daily fire occurrence using the components of the Canadian Fire Weather Index System (FWI) and related variables calculated from the ERA-Interim reanalysis.
We develop models in peninsular Spain for the period 1990-2008 for daily fire occurrence (GLMs) and monthly burned area (MARS), and for different phytoclimatic regions.
We assess occurrence model performance using ROC skill area (RSA) and testing their ability to reproduce inter-annual fire-frequency variability, considering different burned area thresholds.
The sensitivity of the models to the level of spatial aggregation of the data is also evaluated. Additionally, we investigate the gain in model performance with the inclusion of socio-economic and land use/land cover (LULC) covariates in model formulation.